Hilarious to me that a thread about Trump gets way more interest than a thread about Ligotti or weird fiction in general on a site dedicated to Ligotti and weird fiction. Probably signifies my time to bow out.

Hilarious to me that a thread about Trump gets way more interest than a thread about Ligotti or weird fiction in general on a site dedicated to Ligotti and weird fiction. Probably signifies my time to bow out.

I'm one to talk for fanning the flames, but yeah, I don't blame you for bowing out.

This is my life. This is my damnation. This is my only regret--that I ever was born.

Probably because, ultimately, politics is more important than any writer or weird fiction, no disrespect intended. Fiction and art are not separate from the real world. They are just ways that help us deal with the real world. The idea that someone can independently read Ligotti or anyone else and not be thinking about world events seems unrealistic. For that matter, traditionally, almost all writing was aligned with a political perspective. So I would argue that "writing" and "fiction" are closely aligned with politics. If anyone has a friend who they don't talk politics with, I would guess it is not a very close friend.

Neoliberalism is what is making climate change worse and destroying the planet. I legit don't think you know what that term means.

Nobody has been intolerant. They have contended your shoot from the hip vague biases with calm reason and data. Even if I were a sceptic of climate change, and I'm even open to the idea some people are faking data for money, Trump's attitude of putting zero research into the matter out of utter laziness and pride in dogged ignorance isn't to be commended. Does anybody here seriously believe Donald Trump would be able to explain the climate change he is denying?

I doubt Hillary cared too much about climate change either, but I'm certain she would have thrown in some piecemeal support for not wrecking the planet rather than taking a reality TV star pride in trollish ignorance people inexplicably find endearing.

'I believe in what the Germans term Ehrfurcht: reverence for things one cannot understand.'
― Robert Aickman, An Essay

It would seem a bit surreal, but politics is sophism and illusion par excellence in whatever form it takes. I defer to H.L. Mencken again: "When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental--men whose thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost...All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre--the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum."﻿

I once fell in love with Plato's notion of the philosopher king. I'm far more cynical now. However, I will always have respect for "politics" in the classical sense of the term. I respect the tradition of politics as it was conceived by the Greeks and Romans, which is why I still feel some appreciation for classical liberalism in its Goethean form, i.e., the general acceptance of the Republican form of government without ignoring the shortcomings of the democratic process. Having said that, I don't care for the caricature of classical liberalism created by the American Right; it lacks the emphasis on the "nobility of the soul" embodied in its early form(s). I feel I would've definitely sided with Cicero, not Caesar.

- moving along before things get out of hand.

Oh, I was speaking of politics in its modern form. I am all for the political in the Aristotelian sense. If it were true that these were great statesmen, orators, and philosophers, it would be another matter.

“Evolution cannot avoid bringing intelligent life ultimately to an awareness of one thing above all else and that one thing is futility.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited

My guess is one of the reasons Nemonymous posted this thread was to stir up activity in a slowed down TLO. If so, he called it correctly and it worked.

That might have been a spin-off at the back of my mind.
But Trump is stranger than fiction. He has also already preternaturally been IN fiction.
I am also genuinely worried about Trump (and Brexit). And interested in them as phenomena. TLO should not hide its collective head in the sand nor spin out of argumentative control about it.
So far, very interesting.

That might have been a spin-off at the back of my mind.
But Trump is stranger than fiction. He has also already preternaturally been IN fiction.
I am also genuinely worried about Trump (and Brexit). And interested in them as phenomena. TLO should not hide its collective head in the sand nor spin out of argumentative control about it.
So far, very interesting.

To be honest I enjoyed this site as a welcome respite from the arguments about Trump and Brexit that are all over other internet forums.
Most threads like this tend to follow the same pattern and cover the same points repeatedly.
They also tend to get very heated and abusive.